Gains in social mobility will not last, warn gloomy Tories

Ministers had little time to savour upbeat headlines generated yesterday by a Cabinet Office study pointing to modest improvements in Britain's gridlocked rates of social mobility. By lunchtime, Chris Grayling, David Cameron's most persistent attack dog, was warning that such progress - if it exists "outside the No 10 spin machine" - would be wiped out by recession. Why so gloomy? Partly politics, and the knowledge that the Thatcher government is widely blamed for stalling the kind of upward mobility taken for granted by postwar baby boomers. The Cameroons are keen not to repeat her mistake, any more than they are to be soft on bankers.

But there are also practical reasons: the poor just don't have access to financial tools most people take for granted to stay afloat, to banks and credit, let alone know-how, said works and pensions spokesman Grayling. Labour promises a strategy to foster "financial capability", but so far it is just talk, he says.

Grayling will not get the issue all his own way. In a battle of the brainy baldies, Gordon Brown has promoted Liam Brown (next man into the cabinet?) to tackle such challenges. After yesterday's study, a white paper seeking to entrench and protect what Labour admits are modest gains through the downturn - the government's preferred word - is due in December to foment debate.

Last month's OECD report that inequality and poverty "fell faster in the UK" than in any comparable country in 2000-05 - albeit modestly - was welcomed after years of negative findings. In a week when Barack Obama looks set to outshine even Lewis Hamilton's success - both of them from modest backgrounds - who could deny the merits of meritocracy?

Brown himself is rarely so persuasive as when he talks wistfully of the bright kids he left behind in the slower streams at Kirkcaldy High, their potential going to waste through lost educational opportunities. Himself a beneficiary of the postwar wave of social mobility which, experts agree, stalled after 1970, he wants to create another one.

From SureStart for the under-fives to university courses and apprenticeships, individuals need higher skills and so does society. Manual jobs in Britain shrank from 75% to 38% between 1911 and 1991. They have shrunk faster since. By 2020 Britain will need 500,000 unskilled workers, compared with 6 million today. They are Brown's target group for upskilling. But mobility is relative as well as absolute, about fairness as well as better jobs, even for office cleaners who need better pay and better kit. How much are life chances improved by who your parents were?

Race and gender matter too. Some immigrants with PhDs become downwardly-mobile bus drivers. Middle-class women have grabbed a huge share of new opportunities.

There is some evidence that education now matters more than parental class and incomes. Governments can do something about that, although the three remain closely linked, as Etonians can confirm: affluent but average kids overtake poor, smart ones.